A review by maurganne
Me Before You by Jojo Moyes
2.0
I appreciated this book for taking an honest look at what appears to be a very difficult subject, and found it to be well-written. The challenge for me was that I couldn't relate to the perspective of most of the characters. Every time someone became angry with Will, a quadriplegic with all of the attendant health complications to go with his complete dependence on those around him, for wanting to end his endless degenerative suffering, I couldn't help getting angry with them in return. Every time he was called selfish in contrast to those who would force him to endure that hell for entirely their own reasons, I wanted to shake the person who said it. This perspective is so foreign to my own values, it made it difficult for me to empathize with the struggles of those characters.
Having said that, and due entirely to Will's ability to exercise the only real power left to him (strength of personality), he ultimately gets what he wants and everyone else is left to come to terms with it in whatever way they can manage- just as they demanded of him all along at his own expense. I respected that portrayal.
While I didn't find the story romantic, probably due to the fact that I don't find relationships romantic when one or both of the participants fails to ever really see the other person as anything more than a reflection of themselves, I did find it to be an emotionally challenging read, and redeeming in that the characters were true to themselves despite the almost one-sided moralizing throughout.
Spoiler
Spoiler: Will's caretaker and love Lou's insistence on seeing his decision to live or die as her responsibility, as her success or failure, seemed perfectly representative of why he didn't want to live. When he ultimately kept his promise to himself to end it, her devastation seemed to be less about having to live without him than it was about her failure to make him want the same thing that she wanted, for her own reasons. Throughout the book, and Will repeatedly makes this point to the other characters but nobody ever seems to really get it, nobody really cares about what Will wants or needs. It's never actually about Will, it's about each character's own moral absolutes and desires, with almost no empathy for what the object of their dilemma is actually experiencing. It was painfully ironic every time they referred to him as selfish and very hard for me to relate to.Having said that, and due entirely to Will's ability to exercise the only real power left to him (strength of personality), he ultimately gets what he wants and everyone else is left to come to terms with it in whatever way they can manage- just as they demanded of him all along at his own expense. I respected that portrayal.
While I didn't find the story romantic, probably due to the fact that I don't find relationships romantic when one or both of the participants fails to ever really see the other person as anything more than a reflection of themselves, I did find it to be an emotionally challenging read, and redeeming in that the characters were true to themselves despite the almost one-sided moralizing throughout.